Cracking the Product Execution Interview

The product execution interview is everywhere nowadays.

• ChatGPT interactions are down 10% in the last week. What would you do?
• What success metrics would you set for Uber?
• How would you reduce churn for Facebook?

Looking for how to answer these questions? I break it down in this piece.

These case questions are up to ~30% of interview processes based on a survey of ~100 processes I conducted.

I’ve been mining the internet and talking to hiring managers about where this interview actually came from.

It turns out, it’s Google and Facebook.

→ By 2008, companies like Google were extensively using product sense interviews. This led to slow and steady growth in the interview.

→ By 2014, execution was officially an interview at Google. This further accelerated the uptick.

In the ensuing years, Meta wanted to make sure its PMs understood the product and its value to users. They also wanted to check that PMs could prioritize impactful metrics.

→ By 2017, Facebook codified the product execution interview into one of its three main interviews (the other’s are product sense and leadership & drive).

Since then, the growth of the interview has been scaling fast.

Have you encountered the execution interview?